Addie Nye NortonMentor City Council made history on January 5, electing Councilwoman Janet A. Dowling as president of Mentor City Council.  She is the first woman president of City Council in its 53-year history.  Dowling was a 1967 Graduate of Mentor High School and attended Lakeland Community College and Hiram College.  Dowling has served as Vice President/CFO of Lake County Plating Corporation.   In 2011, Dowling was appointed to Council after serving as   Chairman of the committee that circulated petitions that required Council to televise the Mentor City Council meetings in their entirety, including the persons-before-Council segment that had been removed from the air by a vote of Council.  In addition, Dowling was liaison with the city administration to create the city of Mentor’s Annual Classic Car Cruise, was appointed two times to the Greater Mentor Port Authority, and served as Secretary/Treasurer for both of those terms until resigning in January 2011 to accept the appointment to the at-large position on Council.

Dowling brings a lot to her new position as did some of the other Female Firsts of Lake County.  Here are a Few:

Addie Nye Norton

First Woman Probate Judge in Ohio

Addie Nye Norton bears the unique distinction of being the first woman in the State of Ohio to be elected to the important office of Probate Judge.  In 1920, Judge Clark H. Nye decided to retire from the office he had long filled, and Mrs. Norton became his successor. It may be remembered that in the year of 1920, the elective franchise was given to women, but not until after the party primaries. A Painesville attorney had been nominated on the Republican ticket for Probate Judge. Then, before the November election, the nineteenth amendment became effective.

Long experience and familiarity with the duties of this office (she was the Deputy Clerk for 17 years) and Addie Nye Norton’s proven efficiency made her an admirable candidate for the position. By petition she was placed in nomination on an Independent ticket. The candidacy of a woman for office was something unheard of, but so great was the popularity of Mrs. Norton, that when the vote was announced in November, she had carried all but two precincts in the County.

The election attracted attention all over Ohio, for Judge Norton was the first woman to hold this office in the State.

 

Dr. Amy Kaukonen

The First Woman Mayor in Ohio

Mayor of Fairport Harbor 1921 to 1922 (?)

The youngest female graduate of the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, Kaukonen was asked to run for mayor by prohibitionists who thought male mayors had failed to clean up Fairport Harbor.  Kaukonen waged an honest campaign and won by 75 votes over her adversary William Stange.  (Kaukonen 465, Stange 390.)

Heavily publicized by the Painesville Telegraph, stories made much of the prohibition issue, but much more of the woman candidate partially due to the 19th amendment passing in 1919.  In Finland, land owning women voted in 1865, and all women voted in 1906.  When Kaukonen ran for mayor the population of Fairport was 4211, half Finnish.

The mayor kept her promises in spite of the death threats from the bootleggers.  She participated in raids on the speakeasies with federal agents, even getting her eye blackened once.  She led the village council in requiring licensing and supervision for shooting galleries, dance halls, bowling alleys, and even soft drink places.

Before completing her term in office, Kaukonen moved to Seattle, Washington where she ran a large hospital.  She later moved back to Cleveland and served as a Republican precinct committeewoman.  She eventually moved to Painesville where she died in 1984 at the age of 83.

 

Industrial Strength Mayor:

Eleanor B. Garfield

Mayor of Mentor 1952 to 1956

Eleanor Garfield, the widow of Rudolph Garfield who was President James A. Garfield’s grandson, had little to offer as mayor based on experience and education alone.  She  owned her own business of furniture refinishing and she had been a  member of the Mentor Girl Scout Council.  When she first ran for mayor, she ran against two other apparently more qualified men and won.

Garfield was described in the Mentor Monitor  in an article entitled “Know Your Candidates” as follows:

“There isn’t too much we can say about Eleanor Garfield that hasn’t already been said by the many things she has done for the community in the 25 years she has been here.”

Despite her apparent disadvantages experientially, Garfield was elected and became Mentor’s first woman mayor with a budget of $146,876 for the year 1952.

Garfield became mayor during the industrial expansion of the county.  Lake County was the fastest growing county in Ohio at that time.  Garfield had to keep pace with new industrial development, new housing development, the accompanying public utilities demands and safety concerns that came with that development.   Garfield said in the Mentor Monitor after she became mayor, “Mentor Village is going through a difficult period in her history.  She is changing radically and swiftly from a quiet country village to a fast growing suburban area.”

According to a News Herald article entitled “Most Influential: Eleanor B. Garfield remembered as first lady of Mentor ,“ written in 2012, Garfield’s most notable achievement was “to successfully lobby then-governor C. William O’Neill to relocate the Lakeland Freeway (Route 2), to make more room for an industrial park planned along Tyler Boulevard between routes 306 and 615.”

And in that same article, a friend of the family, Ray Dawson, tells the story about Garfield Park,

“While mayor, she and the police chief hid in the bushes in an attempt to get evidence of a gambling operation at the Old Newell Estate — later renamed the Eleanor B. Garfield Park. The operation was broken up within a couple of weeks, and the estate burned down two years later. She had a dream of developing a park there and raised donations from the area’s wealthy to purchase it.  She didn’t have to go door-to-door, they came to her.  (They) had a little tea pouring, and it was all done.”

Garfield was often seen out and about in her overalls, and she was known for her can-do attitude.  She was said to have painted the inside of the Old Village Hall all by herself soon after taking office.  Because of her strong personality, Garfield often butted heads with council members during council meetings.  She was outspoken and seemingly did not take notice of any kind of political correctness.

Despite the conflicts that arose as a result of her no- nonsense nature, Garfield is remembered fondly.  In the same News Herald article above, Ward 4 Councilman John Krueger said, “The population was small and most everybody knew each other, and Gramma G knew them all, including all the families up on the hill, such as the Boltons and Kings, along with many others.  With these contacts, she got things done.”

If you are interested in learning more about the Women of Lake County, make sure to attend our Women’s History Luncheon! Many of the women listed above can also be seen in our new “Formations of an Election: Voting Lake County” exhibit at the Center. Admission is $3.00.